Abstract
Considering the increased interest in the role that a brand's social media marketing activities (SMMA) play in providing better experiences, the current study examines associations among SMMA, brand experience, purchase intention, and attitude towards the brand. This study also assesses the customer generation (Millennials vs. Non-Millenials) and customer engagement level (high vs. low) as moderators in the SMMA-brand experience link. 413 responses were collected from individuals who follow a brand on social media and employed structural equation modelling for the analysis purpose. The results suggest an essential role of SMMA in driving brand experience, purchase intention, and attitude towards the brand. Results also establish that the SMMA-brand experience link varies across consumer generation (Millennials vs. Non-Millenials) and customer engagement level (high vs. low) with the brand's SMMA. These results aid marketers in realizing the role of consumers' generation and their engagement level relating to SMMA-brand experience relationship. The study concludes with implications, limitations, and future research avenues.
1. Introduction
Over the past few years, a lot of optimism and excitement surround social media’s pivotal importance as one of the leading virtual platforms to interact with consumers (Appel et al., 2020; Dwivedi et al., 2020; Nijssen and Ordanini, 2020). This radical advancement forces marketers to effectively maintain meaningful customer-brand relationships and convey value propositions in this platform (Carlson et al., 2019). Social media as a means of marketing offer an effective way to improve brand value by exchanging information and ideas among individuals/customers online (Kim and Ko, 2012). With this increased relevance of social media marketing, it has become indispensable to examine the role of brands’ Social Media Marketing Activities (SMMA) in shaping consumer responses (Alalwan et al., 2017; Kim and Ko, 2012).
6.3. Limitations and further research possibilities
This research has certain limitations. First, we exercised a nonprobability sampling technique that may encompass the matter of generalizability. However, the application of non-probability sampling is predominant in SMMA literature (e.g., Kim and Ko, 2012). Further studies with a research design that minimizes the sampling limitation are, therefore, suggested. Second, the present study categorized customer generation into millennials and non-millennials sub-groups based on its relevance and usefulness (Han and Kim, 2020). It could be interesting to classify respondents into Generation X vs. Millennials or Millenials vs. Centennials sub-groups to examine relationships discussed here. Third, the study assessed customer engagement as a moderator; further studies may consider some essential social-demographic variables such as education, gender, age, etc. At last, we advocate the use of longitudinal research design in testing the given relationships.
